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Alumni - Nicola Atkinson, MA Publishing

After finishing the MA Publishing course in May 2008, I began working at Oxford Children’s Books (OUP) as a Marketing Assistant in July 2008. Two months in and I love my job. I’ve helped to design bookmarks, extract booklets and bound proofs, liaise with freelance designers, printing companies, and in-house staff from editorial to sales. I work on e-newsletters for fans of some of our fantastic series, update the Oxford Children’s website and am currently hard at work on the catalogue for 2009. My days are quite varied, with responsibilities also including looking after the travels of the ever popular Winnie the Witch and Pippi Longstocking costumes!

With a sales conference, trip to a printers, and travels with authors and illustrators to the Cheltenham Festival andNorthern Children’s Book Festival the rest of 2009 looks exciting.

I remember reading these alumni pages before finishing my application form for the course and hoping that my experience would be as positive as I had seen with each alumni’s feedback. I can highly recommend the MA in Publishing for getting such a great insight into all aspects of the publishing world and for giving me the best basis possible for understanding what on earth I’m supposed to be doing! If you think you love books, take up any work experience going and try to find where yourtalents are best suited, there’s a lot more to publishing than editing.